Europe speaks its own post-Brexit English

'Eurish' offers a mix of romance and Germanic influences — and no tricky metaphors

michael skapinker

13.02.2018

"When push comes to shove." It was a jolt to hear this expression from a participant at a recent training event in Amsterdam because I had heard the same words at a Frankfurt session the week before.

Both events were in English, and those taking part were fluent and confident. The Dutch trainees' English was close to a native speaker's idea of correctness. But in 10 hours of teaching and listening in the two cities, those twin instances of "push comes to shove" were the only bits of metaphorical language that I heard.